Hello and welcome to todays class, please take a seat. (note though some of these were introduced in MH4 since much of the things shown will be new to the west in 4U what will be referenced will state that 4U will be first introducing it as it is first showing it to the western audiance)

We will start with the amount of monsters and weapon types in each game in each game.

Previous Portable games:

Spoiler:

Lets start with one of the top rated main series games so far, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite:

Unknown Great Forest (we will take a closer look at this one on it's own)

New mechanics in MH4U(these have also been addapted in Fronteir and were tested in other games prior to being added in the main series of MH. When asked Capcom Japan stated that a lot of the ideas had actually com from fans of the series in the west and tested in several games before being added into Monster Hunter, some of these were used in previous games such as the "lock on feature".)

Air attacks, weapon upswings leading into air attacks, environmental interaction (wall climbing/jumping ect.), Monster cling attacks (being able to hang on the monster for direct attacks)

Capcom stated that MH4U will include even more interaction with monsters, the environment and airial attacks over MH4 though did not go into detail.

Other additions:

Spoiler:

Capcom has stated that even though they have added a huge ammount of weapons and armors into MH4U they wanted to make the playability of Monster Hunter continue as well as the challenge continue long after you have collected everything. To do this they have added the Unknown Great Forest.

The Unknown Great Forest is basically 4's equivelant of 3's Moga Woods however it will have a huge change over anything seen in MH games before it to include the reward and Mining equipment, known as "Excavation Gear".

Unlike all other areas in the Monster Hunter series, the layout of the Unknown Great Forest is randomized, with the monsters, items, and terrain changing each time it is entered. You can save a particularly favorite map to play over and over again and share with others via streetpass and in Multiplayer session. Also each time the same map is beaten the level of difficulty as well as the rewards found within will increase in rarity.

Excavation Gear:

Armors can be from any monster from any game and will appear differently than their original design. The skills, slots, and defence will also be randomized (within peramiters).

This may mean you will end up with 3 Lagi Blademaster chests all different colors and all with different ammounts of slots and different skills. One may be really good and better than any of the actual pieces you had made from a quest monster while the others you may just want to sell off.

Trading:

In 4U there is an exstinsive trading system based on where you are at in the game.

The Wyverian Wholesaler can exchange monster materials that the players currently own for materials of monsters which are not available to be hunted in the game. These materials can be used to build various equipment from these monsters and may have improvements since their last game debut. In order to unlock the option to trade for these materials, certain conditions must be met in the form of completing Quests in the game.

Example: once you have cleared the correct 7:star: Guild quest you can trade a "Rajang's Tenacity" for a "Gaoren Thoracic"

There are many other new additions to MH4U over previous MH games, (I will add more later) if you have questions or would like to post a few or exspand on some yourself please do so.

It seemed to me that a lot of people didn't know just how much the game had actually been updated, though still a core MH game the amount to do has been really increased and Capcom has seemed to gone out of their way to keep people interested in playing and to keep them challenged.

Though much about 4U spacifically is still unknown and Capcom themselves have stated updates over 4U (even with 4 data being able to transfer to 4U in japan), those of us in the west should have a lot to look forward to early next year. If you have given up on MH or are getting a little worn out.. MH4U might be the time to give it one more go.

In the mean time here are some MH4 video's to show what we do know:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

E3 2014 Treehouse gameplay 30 minutes

More updates: Several monsters now have an "additional" ragemode due to the Feral Wyvern virus giving them additional abilities when fighting them in later HR ranks.

Last edited by dcj91x on Mon Jul 14, 2014 2:05 pm; edited 3 times in total

Armors can be from any monster from any game and will appear differently than their original design. The skills, slots, and defence will also be randomized (within peramiters).

wat

This is worse than charm tables. Yep, not wasting my time with this game. hope armor sets go back as they were in unite, except better. More info on this would be needed to change my mind. In 3U, charm sniping and charm table exploits were used to remedy the problem it had, but this creates another problem for 4U. Why u do dis capcom.

Armors can be from any monster from any game and will appear differently than their original design. The skills, slots, and defence will also be randomized (within peramiters).

wat

This is worse than charm tables. Yep, not wasting my time with this game. hope armor sets go back as they were in unite, except better. More info on this would be needed to change my mind. In 3U, charm sniping and charm table exploits were used to remedy the problem it had, but this creates another problem for 4U. Why u do dis capcom.

^ correct. It focusses on the Mined "excavation gear" not the ones from the ingame monsters. (also "charm tables" have been reworked quite a bit over tri/3u and should eliviate a lot of problems/complaints people had in previous games) There will be possitives and negatives to this as well. It promotes mixed armors which there are a lot of people who use them and will also offer a loot more optons outside of normal quests once you have reached an impass or point you are stuck at.

This IMO will help a lot of people.

Also, Nintendo has announced today that they will once again be the ones doing all the promotion and distrabution for MH4U (as with 3U) agross the EU areas. This will most likely lead to many promotions and extras for those planning to get the game such as the "buy 3U get a DL copy for a friend", that Nintendo did.

Here's some new screen shots as well:

new screenshots!

Last edited by dcj91x on Wed Jul 02, 2014 2:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

To answer some of the questions from above about some of the skills, armors and creatures from 3U I will first give a blanket answer... There are new skills in 4U and like with each MH game they often replace older skills. Also with the addition of new mechanics some older skills may have had to be adjusted and worked on to fit better in the newer game, just like with the upswings being modified to work better and alongside the airial attacks.

In 3U the Kelbi Bow was basically the only "special" bow as there were no event bows, no rust bows and so on.. and with slime being a new feature they wanted to show it off. That no longer being the case it has been lessened and adjusted to fit more evenly into the series. One of the biggest complaints also was the "overuse" of the kelbi bow. As of yet for MH4 even with the new weapons, I myself have not heard of any weapons or status being highly overused or misued as of yet. With capcom having most things (even the event items) being more evened out. Now that does not mean things wont change from 4 to 4U however..

Antari18, you asked about Slime/Blast in 4U and such.. well while it is still there and several creatures do have it even Teostra as do weapons it is more even on how it works as far as damage and the monsters affected by it. So you wont see full groups going out with kelbi bows thinking they can just use onely it anymore.

As far as weapons and armors... well some will remain the same and some will be able to be made through trade and excavation gear.. but don't exspect it to be exactly the same... Even the older monsters returning will not have the exact same weapons and armors as before. You have to remember that there are "NEW" skill sets and mechanics as well as returning ones and they have to work all those into the game.

For some examples on the "new skill sets" they have added these Armor Skills to 4U:

Actually as far as I learned from many places slime has been renamed as blast (blastblight) on monsters such as Teostra or Red Tigrex while it stays as Slime on Brachydios (which makes sense since only the body of Brachydios is capable of producing explosive slime).

Although in 3U prosperity age I wasn't into "say no to kelbi bow" movement, in 4, as far as I heard there was a similar type of concern - Excavation Gear was highly overused and often their raw/element exceeded this presented by traditional "monster parts" weapons. Also Insect Glaive from Dara Amadyura (Harmonious Halberd) combined with speed bug seem like far superior choice over other options. New type of weapons lacks diversity. It's easily fixable with IG, but Charge Blade seem to be more troublesome. So far we only get exhaust and element phials. If they do same thing as with SA, power phials will remain superior to all other options forever. Those aspects definately need some improvements and I'm hoping they try to balance it out in 4U. It's not an easy task though...

When it comes to Grongigas hammer, there is equivalent of it in 4 - hammer from Dara Amadyura, so I'm not too sad even if it won't be in this game.

^ Remember 4U is still going to be slightly different from 4 (though not much as 4 can be transfered to 4U/g in japan). Also, usually when new weapons are introduced for the "first" time there is a lack in diversity. As we saw with the amount of weapons that had "slime" in 3U, that is likely why they added more creatures with slime/blast in 4/4U. By combining and making slime/blast into basically the same thing it brodens the amount and diversity of the weapons you can have it on. 4U being an 'expansion' it should also have more of each of the new weapons. Also 4 not having been released in the west you have to look at it as being the first time MOST eveyone here has seen any of this.

As far as the excavation gear a lot of the reason for it is to encourage people to continue playing after they have gotten all the regular monster gear and to use mixed armors so yeah... to see more of those later on in the game or even before isn't that much of a suprise since that's the whole point of them and since they are really appealing.

Also just like with the bows being reintroduced in 3u and for many who started with tri most people will go with the new weapons.. so again no suprise if a lot of people go with the new weapons and use the most powerful versions of them.

I absolutely love the idea of excavation gear because it's really a good way to differ players look. For instance up till now every Alatreon Great Sword looks alike - same purple color scheme. But with excavation weapons you can get different colour one. I'll go crazy about blue one :D I also heard that excavation weapons can give boosts to certain skills so there's huge potential there.

But with great potential comes great danger. For starters excavation gear can exceed raw/element of normal weapons only to certain degree. Otherwise there's really no point in using the latter. And there we have problem present in 4. I.e. the difference between highest raw GS from monster parts and excavation GS was way over 200 in raw. It's really huge difference. Also excavation gear enables you to bypass grinding almost completely if you're lucky. You can even mine something far superior than the best weapon from monsters parts at the very beginning of the game. When you do you ask yourself, what's the reason for using anything else. This creates lack of variety which leads to boredom. And that's a bad thing.

Actually no. It's not at the very begining of the game and you do have to "grind" of sorts and work for it.

Though you can mine for excavation gear right away what you will get on that first quest will not be high level, no mater how many tiimes you mine... The more you beat a set Unknown forest quest you have saved the more "difficult" and the "rarer" the items and excavation gear you will get.. But that doesn't mean you will have the weapons and armor and skills to acheive getting it. So no.. Not a bad thing because you wont beable to get those great excavation items without getting there first and you can't get there without beating the main quests and getting the regular armor and so on first... It all works together.

And remember everyones game is different and the excavation gear for each person is different and random as well. So it's a bit more complex and will offer a lot more than just getting one great thing from the begining and sticking with that.